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Month: February 2017

Every time I look out my kitchen window.
Every time I finish baking and start washing every dish.
Every time I forget an ingredient for a recipe and have to stop everything and run to the store.

Hand it to me to think of characters that don’t exist. Thinking of characters as real life scenarios. I find myself daydreaming so often, I believe it is real life. Which leads me to Amelie. Her need to fix everyone. Her beautiful wardrobe, her tiny flat overlooking her neighbor’s window. How toward the end of the film she thinks of the man that had caught her attention. How she daydreams that he is right there with her and it draws so much emotion from her that a tear falls from her eye.

It makes me think of the men that don’t know I exist. Even after all this time. How one in particular has been fixated on my mind often that if I ever met him in person, he would be a disappointment. Because I have built him up in my mind; from his mannerisms to his essence that he would be too good to be true in real life. Hand it to me to find a man that doesn’t exist. To fall for someone way beyond my league. I guess over the years I find it’s easier to fall in love with a person that doesn’t exist. That way men like him could never let me down. When every man has failed you. Has brought you up only to bring you down to the worthless way you feel. I fall in love with people that don’t exist. Characters in films, fictional people that could never exist in real life. Hiding from my own reality. The reality of feeling broken by the last man that thought he knew me well.

I believe these daydreams because reality has been too much to bear at times. Because the men on the dating sites have been too busy wanting someone else, because I am never what they are looking for. They take too long to reply, take too much of your time or string you along for their own benefit. They want me when they want me. I have spent too long falling for people that will only bring me down. For them to leave me for someone better.

I wash another dish. Stare at the window, and wish to be somewhere else. To believe that the man I dreamed up, that follows me in my dreams does exist. Forgetting that I have only spoke 4 words to him. Or that we saw each other years later in passing. But sometimes when I forget an ingredient or think of something silly, I feel like Amelie.

It’s then that I stare at my reflection that haunts me through the window. My hair that never falls in the same place as hers does. How people will never care about how much I try to fix things. And no matter what I do, daydreams are never as good as when someone tells you they love you.

I can’t help but feel like Amelie. As I wash another dish and continue to stare out the window. If only movies were real and dreams came true just the same. But they don’t. Back to reality, back to staring out that window.

He didn’t smoke. But everyone else around him did. It was so easy back then to make conversation. Just standing next to a shivering person in the cold, asking for a light. It didn’t matter much to him. He didn’t smoke and everyone else around him did. He would just keep the conversation going.

He’d say things that I would find absolutely fascinating. Stupid things that I think back upon years later. How easy the lines flowed from his tongue. Captivating a shivering crowd just keeping warm from a storm. How he loved lines like “Tobacco and Peppermint”, how each item went well as a before and after thought.

Things about him made him seem off. He didn’t drive. After having his license revoked from driving recklessly in his hometown, he relied on other people to get him where he needed to be. Things I understood. Everyone drove me around and driving always seemed like an after thought. Stupid things I still remember. Why do I still remember these things?

They could have been twins. The same sentiments, the same sense of humor. They couldn’t have been more alike. His only downfall was a dry sarcastic humor that people believed made him a genuinely likable person. We saw through that. Making jokes and calling him every name under the sun. He was not the sun, but how he acted like he was. I don’t know why I thought of him today. Or why after ten plus years, he seems to creep into my mind. But when my head hurts I think of the last time my head hurt. How weather changes my emotional state and it comes back to him.

I always wanted to say goodbye, but I never had a chance to. I wanted to say so many things but every word came out wrong. Tongue tied with wanting to say the right thing but every word tying together and coming out wrong. I find myself talking to him in dreams in cities far from my hometown. In dreams the words flow out easily then they do in my waking day. Some days, it’s easier to see people in dreams then in my waking day. Instead I left a space for other people to fill with words and stories. I live off the adrenaline of other people’s stories. The words that flow so easily off their tongues. When I am left tongue tied with goodbyes.

Tobacco and Peppermint. How I tend to think of that line often.

I think of that crowded bar and watching bands play. How easy they made it seem. How their emotions came out in song and I still struggled to express myself. How the room was muggy and how none of it mattered. The rain poured down and I see you walk with her. Hand in hand not thinking anyone was watching. Just as you walked through the door your hands break apart. Gone back to reality and gone to different ends of the room. Why was I so fixated on that moment. Why that memory about everything else. How poetic it seemed to see people walk in from the rain and break apart once they found shelter. For a moment they were each others shelter, until the real world settled in. That night creeps back to my mind once the weather changes. When I think of rainy days and crowded rooms; finding shelter from storms.

How the singer of a band came up to ask for the time, and stood and stared at a button on my coat. Almost waking me from my haze of dream state. We both became silent for a minute. Maybe in that moment we were both in that dream state. Trying to find the words in waking day. Or maybe he was just staring at a button on a coat of girl that reminded him of something else.

A psychic came up to me in the mall today. Which sounds weird just saying it right off the bat, but this isn’t the first time. I always wonder when stuff like that happens, if they could read everything in your mind. What you’re feeling, who you’re thinking of, and everything else in between. It caught me off guard. When I was busy thinking of people I thought were long forgotten in my mind. I know it’s a hustle, I know it’s some mind game, then I start thinking, “what if?“.

What if she knows something I don’t know? What if everything isn’t just some bogus hustle and she really sees me.

“Your energy is very strong…I see good things coming your way but something is holding you back”, She tells me. Hands me a card and then walks away.

I’ve written about psychics before but something about today made me think back to the first time. I remember it so vividly to the clothes I was wearing and the deep cigarette smoke of a crowded Vegas casino. I was in Planet Hollywood and a lady looked at me and said “You look like you need someone to talk to..” I wanted to cry right then and there because she was right. I sat and listened to her talk about my life at it’s current state. The people who have hurt me. What I was doing to myself. How I needed to stop being in love with people who would never love me back. How my Aura was bright but I lived in a state of complete darkness.

I don’t talk about my problems. I talk about my dreams, my ambitions but to talk about what’s hurting me, I don’t talk to anyone.

At that point in my life I was keeping a variety of secrets and dealing with my own personal demons and self destruction. I’ve had people tell me “If you need someone to talk to, I am here”. Which I am grateful for, but I am stuck in a memory of my problems aren’t half as bad as everyone else’s. This isn’t a pity party. It’s easier to hear everyone else and fade softly into the background. But here I am, seven years later and someone tells me: “Your energy is strong, good things are coming your way but something is holding you back”.

I know what’s holding me back. I am holding me back. I am holding back everything I can to not let people in. I am holding back my life in order to let others feel happy. I know this all too well.

He used to say he could see my aura.

“I am looking at your aura”, he’d say“No you can’t. If so what color is it?”, I’d reply.

He would fidget and laugh, then never answer. Always changing the song and tapping his fingers to the beat. Songs that I never understand until long after he had gone.

“I can see your aura”, he’d say. Over and Over, again.

Many times I wondered what that meant. Just another ploy to make me believe he cared. That he was the only person that could see me. The only person that saw straight through me. He always gave off this impression that he knew me best. That he knew better than what I was putting out into the world. Telling me that I wasn’t living up to my full potential. Words that have remain triggers to my self-esteem, after I swore that I was letting go of everything that belonged to him.

Seven years later, my heart stops when someone says “Your energy is very strong..”. Because I don’t doubt that my energy is strong. I don’t doubt that I need someone to talk to. I just can’t help wonder how these people find me. Is it through the cosmic energy I put out into the world? Is it my big dopey sad eyes that go looking for them? I know it’s all bullshit. I know it’s all some hustle for money. Still I nod, smile, and take their card. Tracing the number on the card, over and over, until my friend returns. They always find me, just when I am ready to let go.

Sometimes I wish I could tell you about this, where in some universe we were still friends. Still able to talk about things as if nothing had happened. But then I remember that you’d always turn this around like this was my fault. That I asked for this to happen. Always my fault and it would end in an argument where I was the one apologizing. This is where I should be angry, this is where it still hurts. I can’t help but think that you never saw my aura, even though you said you did. You lied to me when I thought you were being true. I am tired of letting this sadness hold me back.

It’s at that moment, I completely forget you. Completely let you go. I fold the card in half and stuff it in my pocket.